(Sarasota, FL) The Sarasota Film Festival (SFF) today announced its full line-up, including its Opening Night, Centerpiece, Closing Night, Spotlight, Narrative Feature Competition, Independent Visions Competition, Documentary Feature Competition, Narrative, Documentary and Short Films. Click here for more information.
Sarasota, FL) The 21st Annual Sarasota Film Festival concluded Saturday evening with the screening of Greg Kinnear’s directorial debut film “Phil” at the Sarasota Opera House. Kinnear also appeared in a Q&A earlier in the day before a packed house at the Sage Restaurant in downtown Sarasota.
“Phil” is one of those movies that is difficult to categorize. It has some very funny moments and some dramatic dark moments. The film deals with the topic of suicide creating a delicate line that Kinnear as both an actor in the lead role and director walks with great skill in leading the audience on this storytelling journey.
Phil is a dentist who is dissatisfied and looking for more meaning in his life. We even see him contemplating suicide. When one of his patients Michael, played by Bradley Whitford, who exudes an apparent zest for life and is seemingly very successful I career and home life comes in for a routine cleaning, it sets Phil on his journey to find that same kind of zeal in his own existence.
Without giving away too much, Phil, who is divorced and has a teen-age daughter, follows Michael around for awhile and admires his home, family and especially his wife, played by Emily Mortimer. We are then shocked to see that Michael has committed suicide by hanging himself in the woods which Phil discovers while following him in his car. Phil goes to Michael’s funeral and in a funny and poignant scene, meets his widow Alicia. Phil pretends to be a friend of Michael that he knew many years ago in Greece and even takes on a Greek accent. Alicia is touched that Phil, pretending to be this friend, traveled all this way to honor her husband and invites him to her house. Phil then pretends to be a plumber and offers to finish a job Michael had begun refurbishing Alicia’s bathroom just to be able to be near her. While it sounds a bit creepy, Kinnear plays the part with such effective pathos that the audience can’t help but root for him. I’ll leave the plot there, but the film does end on a positive note and will leave you feeling good about what happened.
In other events during the festival, Emmy Award winning and Tony Award winning actress Blythe Danner was honored with the SFF Icon Award and Emmy Award winning and Tony Award nominated actress Anne Heche was honored with a Career Tribute Award. The festival also celebrated the groundbreaking of its new facility to be built in downtown Sarasota.
Doug Miles talks with actress/singer Audrey Landers about her new film “Love at Sea” airing on the Hallmark Channel and her latest projects. Audrey is best known for her role as Afton Cooper on the classic TV series “Dallas”.
Don Henderson and Doug Miles review “Love Means Zero” the Nick Bollettieri documentary at the Sarasota Film Festival 4/21/18.
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Actor Sir Roger Moore passed away at age 89 today. He was an accomplished actor who is best known for two iconic roles, “Simon Templar, The Saint” on television and “James Bond 007” in film.
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Doug Miles talks with Don Nunley, author “Steve McQueen: LeMans in the Rearview Mirror” on “Talk Across America”.
If you’re interested in the book, you may order in the Amazon box below.
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(Sarasota, FL) When deciding which films I would like to review in this year’s Sarasota Film Festival, I was drawn immediately to the title in the festival’s catalog “Sarasota Half In Dream”. I’ve lived in Sarasota more than 20 years and seeing a film about my adopted hometown in our local festival appealed to my interest and curiosity. The blurb in the catalog described the film as an “experimental documentary”. That should have been a clue that what I thought the film was about was not exactly what I got to see.
The film begins with a montage of clips from old travel ads extolling the virtues of visiting Sarasota, many of which include Rick Defuria, a former circuit court judge who was also a part time actor and original anchor on Sarasota’s cable news channel SNN in the 1990’s. About two minutes in to that overly long montage segment, I knew this film was not going to be a love letter to Sarasota.
What follows is a series of segments on an abandoned golf course, factory, freight cars and highlighted (or lowlighted) by an exploration of the now defunct and decaying Colony Tennis Resort on Longboat Key. There is also an interview with someone named Elliot who spends about ten minutes criticizing Sarasota as a place filled with “the old, white and rich” that apparently don’t care about young people and that Sarasota will someday sink underwater. Elliott also complains there is nothing for young people to do in Sarasota and he and his school friends had to create their own “culture” in the woods near the school they attended.
Another long segment in the film explores a parking garage at night showing several high-schoolers using it for a skateboard park while the film’s dour narrator states Sarasota is becoming known for an abundance of garages.
In between all the decay, the film juxtaposes shots of insects, wasps, hornets and crabs on a Lido Key inlet bringing back memories of those science films shown in high school biology class.
The two filmmakers, who spoke to the audience after Sunday’s screening at the Hollywood 20 Theaters, grew up in Sarasota and said the film took more than 4 years to complete while both were going to school and working their regular jobs.
While the film is well crafted technically and uses music primarily written and performed by a local band called “Lung Cycles”, this documentary doesn’t shine Sarasota in a great light. True, all cities have sections of urban decay and run down buildings and Sarasota has its share of those, but if all you saw was this film and had never been here, you’d get the impression the whole town looked like the South Bronx in the 1970’s.
It is unclear if or how many of these films in the Sarasota Film Festival will get any kind of distribution nationally. Filmmakers hope a positive buzz from screenings will entice either distributors or television networks to buy their films. I would bet the Sarasota Convention and Visitors Bureau would not be pleased if “Sarasota Half In Dream” was ever seen by anyone outside of our fair city.
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